Mozart. Dude would be social media famous in .2 seconds. He’d be annoying us all. He’d be covering all new songs same day after hearing it once. And I’m here for that chaos.
Jeff Buckley, no question. He released arguably the best album of the 90s (Grace) then went and fucking drowned. Only 30 years old. He coulda been one of the best to ever do it, but we're left wondering.
Here I am, upvoting comments of people who wrote answers first: Bach, Mozart and Buckley. I tend to believe second or third albums are the best ones from an artist, can you imagine if this was true for Buckley?
Love to basically every mentioned artists, but I think most of them did give the best they had while alive.
Imo, unfortunately, bringing back Legends will just harm their legacy (I'm thinking of John Lennon, Jimi Hendrix, David Bowie...).
However Tupac may have had an enormous impact in the 90s and early 90s music, and so on.
And who knows how grunge could have gained other mainstream success with Cobain...
My vote goes for J.S. Bach. One of my shower thoughts is that he would make a great experimental IDM artist. He would give Authechre a run for their money.
Peter Steele. Although he might disagree. Type O Negative's last album before his death was named "Dead again", and a lot of their music is about escaping yourself (aka suicide or extreme self harm)
Otis Redding. I didn't realize until recently that he died so young, I would've loved to see how the rest of his career turned out. His voice had such a special quality.
Recently wanted to add "this land" to a Playlist, but wanted a more modern cover and it is damn hard to find a version that includes the original lyrics about private property and trespassing.
https://www.woodyguthrie.org/Lyrics/This_Land.htm
Bradley Nowell. Sublime was so good, and none of the bands that have followed in their style have had the same lyricism that Nowell had, or have been able to really blend genres like they did to make something completely unique.
Johann Pachelbel. So many modern songs reuse the melody from his Canon in D. I just think, it'd be fun to let him listen to them. Would probably blow his mind to listen to modern music, to begin with, and then to have it be his melody, too. 🙃
Max Bennett. He's not famous famous but he's well known enough in the jazz scene. He played with Frank Sinatra, Dizzie Gillespie, and recorded on countless studio sessions. I knew him personally and I think was his last student before he passed. Some people closer to him than me told me one of the last things he said was "I need to give jcabral9 his lesson" and it makes me tear up whenever I think about it. I was too young to understand most of his concepts--I wish I could know him as an adult and professional musician myself.
Chuck Schuldiner, frontman of death metal pioneers Death, dude died of cancer in 2001 at the age of 34. I never had the chance to see them play live but their records are incredible.
Cliff Burton, Bass player of Metallica, died when the band's tour bus crashed and he was crushed underneath it. The band lost part of its soul and it took them a very long time to get over Cliffs death. Seeing videos of him playing live makes one understand what was lost, as he was an incredible musician.
On a more general note every artist that died very young, many made a big impact to their genre or even to a wider audience without it ever knowing.
Sure, there are plenty of musicians who had a bigger impact on music as a whole, but NOBODY I've ever seen was more in tune with the universe than Stevie when he was playing.
As far as I can tell, he didn't actually play the guitar. He just acted as a conduit to channel music directly from the universe through a guitar. I don't think he ever once had to pause and consider what to play next when he was improvising, it just flowed out of him non-stop.
He had already started getting even better, having finally gotten sober, and it kills my soul every time I think about what else he could've given us had he not gotten on that helicopter.
Way underrated here. SRV had a great deal of music left in him and few could match his talent. While a number of people suggested on here released great stuff, many did not have as much left in them.